Monday, January 24, 2011

Pierre Akendengue - Eseringila (1978)

Pierre Akendengue is a brilliant poet-musician from Gabon who is acknowledged to be one of the most original voices in African pop music. My first contribution to The Beat magazine presented a survey of his prodigious music, up to then, which you can read here. I also interviewed him once, and that interview is here.

Eseringila is one of Akendengue's early recordings, and it is rare indeed. It took me twenty years searching to find it. I recently wrote about the search on another site. Since getting the record, I learned that it had a limited re-release on the now-defunct French label, Melodie, in 2003. That CD adds Eseringila's songs to those from the other nearly impossible-to-find Akendengue album, Mengo, but places them in a completely different order. I recommend getting one of those CDs while they last, which seems only possible in Europe.

Yet I believe it is important to present music the way the artist originally intended, so here I offer Eseringila intact. It is my first post, and the next will be in a few weeks when I get back from a trip to warmer climes.

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This site is dedicated to rescuing music marginalized or obliterated by global commercial culture. Home will be provided here for recordings abandoned by commerce, and they predominantly will be African.

Vinyl rips are made using decent technology. All posts will be offered at 320 bps, for as explained here, over-compression of music kills it.

The purpose of this blog is to honor brilliant musicians, and I encourage you to scour the planet for recordings of theirs that you can purchase. While this site has no commercial purpose whatsoever, I am confident that presenting this music will generate income for musicians.

If anyone with copyright control has a problem with anything posted on this site, write to me and I will remove it.